A registered nurse who operated medical clinics catering to low-income patients secretly used a doctor’s credentials to bill government insurance programs for treatment he wasn’t licensed to provide and to fool pharmacies into filling prescriptions he wasn’t authorized to write, court records show.

Matthew Meyers has struck a deal to plead guilty Monday before Senior U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips in U.S. District Court to health care fraud.

Meyers held a multistate license as a registered nurse when, in 2013, he and a doctor — identified only as “J.H.” in court records — opened three Neighborhood Urgent Care clinics in East Tennessee.

Providing unlicensed treatment

Meyers is admitting via the plea agreement brokered by defense attorney Wade Davies that he provided treatment to patients in 1,200 cases at the NUC clinic in LaFollette for medical procedures he wasn’t licensed to do. Meyers also operated clinics in Clinton and Oak Ridge.

He billed Medicaid and TennCare — both of which pay for the medical care of children, the disabled and the poor — $94,270 for that treatment using his doctor partner’s credentials, Assistant U.S. Attorney Anne-Marie Svolto wrote.

“Defendant Matthew Meyers knowingly treated patients without a medical license to do so,” Svolto wrote. “J.H. never authorized defendant Matthew Meyers to use his identification/password to treat and see patients.”

Svolto wrote Meyers also used the doctor’s credentials to authorize prescriptions for patients.

Doctor a figurehead

Meyers agreed to skip a grand jury review of the case and plead guilty after he was confronted about the fraud, court records show. The case was made public earlier this month.

According to records in the case, Meyers and “J.H.” went into business together to open the three NUC clinics. The doctor put up money for the venture and served as “medical director” for the clinics. But the doctor was merely a figurehead to satisfy health care regulations, records show. He didn’t treat patients or review their files.

The doctor told authorities he did not know Meyers was using his credentials to fraudulently bill Medicaid and TennCare.

Clinics such as the three owned by Meyers and the doctor primarily employ nurse practitioners.